


Shrike

by Axandrela



Series: We Could Become Heroes [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Adoption, At least not on Earth-1..., Character Death, Earth-1, Earth-12, Found Family, Future Fic, Gen, Growing Up, Growing up with superpowers, Kid Centric, Kid Fic, Next gen superheroes, Original Child Character(s) - Freeform, Original Metahuman Character(s) - Freeform, Orphan Character, Pachwork Family, Superheroes don't stay dead..., Time Travel, Universe Travel, snippets of life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9995309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Axandrela/pseuds/Axandrela
Summary: Shrike- Old English for ‘Shriek’- A small bird that stabs and impales its prey.(Or the adventures of Sara Olivia 'Shrike' Merlyn- a girl from another earth)





	

Shrike

She’s born in a warzone, and with a cry, not a small one of most newborns, but one that shatters the windows and causes their enemy to fall to the ground in pain. Her father and aunt drop their weapons and clutch at their ears, while her mother’s face breaks out into a grin. She has the same scream as her mother. When her cry reaches its final note her father wraps his arms around her and her mother and holds them tight.  
\--------------------  
She’s nine months old and doesn’t want anyone to leave the safehouse. Her screaming started when her aunt, clad in her red kevlar, tried to leave for food, and stopped when she returned. The remaining glass shattered when her father moved to the door to do a perimeter check, and again halted when he returned. The family of four ended up spending the whole day inside.  
\--------------------  
She is only a year old when her aunt dies in battle. She’s already lost an aunt and uncle from this war before her birth, the two she is named for. She doesn’t remember anything about her aunt, she’s too young, nor does she remember the feel of her father’s hot tears landing on her head as he cradled her and cried at the loss of his sister, or that her mother was sobbing, not screaming but sobbing as the windows refused to shatter.  
\-------------------  
She’s two when her mother falls, and doesn’t remember much. She remembers her mother singing, both a lullaby and a battle cry. She remembers the warmth of being clutched to her mother’s chest. The smell of her hair. The echo of a cry so like her own, as glass shattered. She remembers the sound of a laugh, warm and carefree despite the war around them. Her father tries to leave the fight, not for the first time- tries to leave the city by night. His black hood and suit blending into the darkness, with her asleep wrapped in her mother’s own dark kevlar jacket in his arms.  
\-------------------  
She’s three years old when the city falls, everything crashing around her. Her father doesn’t put on a mask anymore (and cries when he sees her wearing her aunt’s red one), nor does he take his kevlar off or drop his weapons; when he falls she follows his example, her mother’s kevlar jacket bound at the waist by a belt she tucks some of his knives into. Then everything burns as a ship falls from the sky. She screams whenever a person approaches, until a woman in white steps through the smoke; a baby strapped to her chest giggling in response to the cry.  
\--------------------  
She’s four and just starting to get used to her new life and earth. Her life is far from normal, but life on the time-ship is peaceful by comparison. She doesn’t quite understand what the multiverse means, just that here all both of her aunts and her Uncle Ollie are alive. She lives with the Legends and shares a cabin with her one year old cousin Laurel Snart. She likes the baby who shares her mother’s name, and doesn’t mind sharing a room with her; in fact it’s soothing to be able to climb into the crib and snuggle with the younger girl when nightmares hit.  
\--------------------  
She’s five years old and her adult relatives are trying to figure out how to explain her existence legally. Apparently you need a birth certificate to register for kindergarten, and apparently you’re parents can’t have been dead for years before you were born in order to obtain one. Eventually they give up trying to explain and just put the truth, hoping that due to being in a different city no one will realize that Laurel Lance died two years before she was born, or that Tommy Merlyn died three years before that...  
\--------------------  
She’s six years old and the kids in her class are mocking her; for being adopted, for carrying a red leather mask with her at all times, and for wearing a black jacket that goes to her knees. She pulls out one of her father’s knives that her aunt helped her hide in her boot and gets expelled. Her aunt isn’t even disappointed, she simply holds her while she cries.  
\--------------------  
She’s eight years old, almost nine, when she comes home from school to her mother sitting in the kitchen with her aunt. Her vision clouds from tears as she runs to her mother. She knows it’s not her mother from her earth, and doesn’t know how she’s back alive on this one, but that doesn’t matter as she buries her face in the woman’s hair that smells the same as she remembers from infancy, and a pair of arms wrap tightly around her.  
\--------------------  
She turns ten today and it’s her first birthday on this earth, living with her mother. Several calls come from Central and Star, with little cousins singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and promises of presents next visit, but it’s just the two of them in Gotham where they’ve lived for less than a year. Sitting across the table from her mother; in their matching kevlar jackets, as they dip french-fries in their milkshakes and laugh at eachother’s stories from school and work they both feel like everything will work out perfectly.  
\--------------------  
She’s twelve years old and thinks it’s funny when some teenagers try to mug her on her way home from school. One of them threatens her with a pocket knife and she outright laughs; sliding one of her father’s throwing knives out of her jacket sleeve. Just the sight of the blade sends them running.  
\--------------------  
She’s fourteen when she’s first puts on the mask. She uses the one she’s carried with her longer than she can remember; the red one that was Aunt Thea’s on her earth. Her mother is out patrolling the city with the Birds of Prey, and doesn’t find out until her shriek shatters all the windows for blocks. Needless to say, she’s grounded.  
\--------------------  
She is in charge of all her little cousin; and most of the other kids of superheroes, for eight hours when she’s sixteen. Sure Tommy Queen is fourteen and Laurel Snart and Cassidy Allen are thirteen, and Jonny and Sara Diggle can be here from the Foundry in ten minutes. But there are five (younger) speedsters, three flying aliens with laser eyes, a nine year old with ice and a five year old with vibe powers; in addition to several (semi) normal children- many of whom are wielding archery sets. When the adults return from saving the planet she’s just surprised that none of the kids needed to go to the emergency room or died and that the building is still standing, though there are several shattered windows from when she screamed at them.  
\--------------------  
She’s eighteen and doesn’t understand why she has to finish high school. If she wanted to she could be a supervillain and just steal all the money she could ever need. As it is two of the three possible careers she’s considering do not require any skill set other than superhero potential; joining the Legends, or ‘working at Star Labs’. Only being a vigilante requires her to have another job, something her mother pointed out; thus university applications and diploma courses by day and masked crime fighting by night.


End file.
